Matheus Montanari

This work develops from an investigation with and about the eucalyptus. Currently, the eucalyptus are among the most planted trees in Brazil, despite their Australian origin. While there, Eucalyptus forests cover about 77% of the native forest area and are responsible for maintaining much of the country's biodiversity, here in Brazil, it has been implemented in a controversial monoculture logic that leaves the so-called "green deserts" behind. The same kind of tree in Australia is considered sacred by the aboriginal population, but in Brazil, the indigenous communities suffer constant conflicts with the use of land, the blocking of sunlight, and the use of pesticides near their territories. Through this duality, the work explores the dangers of adopting a single hegemonic view of nature, culture, and technology without taking into account local variations. 

The video is created with a 3D scanned model of a eucalyptus tree. This digital model is also inserted in a monoculture logic, where it is copied and pasted several times. This occurs in a generative process that, with a ultrassonic sensor, captures the public approximation with the work over the period of the exhibition, then it repeats the images more and more, and as the images are repeated, the less recognizable they become, generating a decomposition through repetition.

 

At the same time, maps of the location of eucalyptus forests in Australia and Brazil also appear, suffering the same type of operation, which shifts their positioning and scale.

The work proposes a monoculture of 3D models, which repeat themselves in such a scale that that decomposes the image it forms. The installation explores the urgency of a technodiverse multiplicity to face the challenges of the Anthropocene. It proposes contact as transformation through the (non)human-vegetal relationship. It points out approximation as alteration through the empty repetition of 3D models copies.

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